Tagged: political philosophy

Everyone shouldn’t have the right to vote. There’s that one controversial opening sentence that some say is required to draw a reader in. Yet there’s nothing at all controversial about that statement. From an ethical point of view, it’s a true statement once one considers the dangers of allowing anyone to vote. There are glaring issues in continuing to bestow this right on anyone who is 18 or older.

The overwhelming number of non-college Whites that supported Donald Trump shouldn’t have the right to vote. One will find that the more one is misinformed, the likelier it is they have little to no college experience. According to statistics, there are more on the Left among college graduates than there are on the Right. This is quite telling. In the end, stripping an unearned right from millions of uneducated people secures more important rights for women (reproductive rights), children (the right to a good education), and people who practice religions other than Christianity. It’s a resounding win! Never mind that some of the rights secured are literally life-and-death, like the rights of minorities being confronted by police brutality. The Right is perfectly okay with infringing on the rights of people they imagine are their enemies, even if it results in harm or even death. Stripping uneducated people of their right to vote is extremely minor by comparison.

The question then becomes, how do we get from where we are to what’s being suggested here? Literacy exams have been proposed in the past, but the reason for such proposals were different. Primarily, these tests were proposed as means to oppress Black voters. The goal here isn’t to oppress anyone. The goal is to keep people from harm. More importantly, it’s to keep people alive. It’s also a utilitarian analysis concerning whose rights matter more. An uneducated person’s right to vote simply doesn’t matter more than the education of children, the reproductive rights of women, the lives of immigrants and minorities, the religious rights of non-Christians, and the marital rights of homosexuals.

When one considers the fact that people forgo their right to vote in election after election — 100 million Americans didn’t vote in the 2016 election — it can be argued that the right to vote isn’t considered that important. A woman in need of reproductive rights doesn’t surrender her rights. A child in need of education doesn’t willingly surrender that right. Minorities who experience police brutality don’t willingly surrender their lives. Immigrants don’t willingly surrender the life they made in the states. Those rights are taken from them by hateful individuals who weaponize their right to vote by rallying behind candidates who support their hateful agendas.

Even given a Kantian analysis, the opening statement isn’t controversial. Per Kant, people are to be treated as ends in themselves and never as a means. Uneducated voters, who are usually Right wing, consider people on the Left a means. In fact, according to the lot of them, the country doesn’t even belong to people on the Left. If it were up to them, people like myself wouldn’t be here. Anyone who isn’t on the Right is a means to their ends, so when they vote in a disastrous Administration, they don’t care about the people they’re hurting. They don’t care about endangering pivotal rights belonging to people on the Left. If it were up to them, women and Blacks still wouldn’t be able to vote, homosexuals wouldn’t be able to marry, non-Christians wouldn’t have religious rights, minorities would experience more police brutality, and abortion would be completely illegal. Their failure on gun control has already resulted in 18 school shootings this year alone — which is a rate of about 40%; should that trend continue, we will end the year with 146 school shootings.

So what’s the point of a literacy test and how would it work? How would it curb the kind of harm that’s been done? For one, it wouldn’t be multiple choice or about correct answers. The tests would be designed to render thoughtful, well-argued responses. It doesn’t matter what people are arguing for, so long as they can demonstrate good arguments and good reasons for subscribing to a given view. Let’s place a bet on how many “god hates fags,” “abortion is murder,” “ban all them Muslims,” “kill the niggers and spics” people will pass a written exam of this sort. An oral presentation could serve as a useful second half to such an exam. Let’s see the well-organized Right wing voting block passes around the right answers to that.

What might very well happen is that uneducated people might realize that education is valuable and that they need to go out and get educated in order to defend their current point of views. In doing so, however, they’ll then realize how mistaken they are. It happens all the time to hardnosed Christians who deny evolution. Some of them even abandon the religion altogether. I’m sure it’ll happen to the uneducated too. Or they’ll whine and moan about them damn liberals and about how their voice isn’t heard; they do it anyway every time Democrats are elected, so again, what would be the difference if they were actually silenced?

All would-be voters would have to articulate answers to the questions like the following. For sake of simplicity, we can focus on an issues that has once again become central because of the Parkland shooting.

Where do you stand on gun control?

What arguments can you make in favor of someone owning a semi-automatic weapon?

Why can’t this same individual own a nuclear arm?

What arguments can you make against someone owning a semi-automatic weapon?

All would-be voters would be required to answer all the question, both for and the against because in having to process their opponent’s way of thinking, they may come to see their own errors. So this test can be developed by historians, philosophers, scientists, etc. The questions would focus on pertinent issues and any voter who can’t get beyond “god hates fags” and “ban the Muslims” would disqualify themselves.

So who decides who passes or fails? You decide! Like any other test, pass or fail falls on your shoulders. Let’s place a bet on the aforementioned people walking out without answering. People who complain about biased graders need to realize that bias isn’t necessarily bad. Perfect objectivity isn’t necessary either. I think one should be able to discern who’s reasonable and who isn’t based on the replies given, should any be given because like I suggested, some may decline to respond. And that’s their failure.

The question then becomes, what if someone can’t articulate their thinking? They wouldn’t lose their right to vote for sake of not being able to articulate their reasoning on one of the issues. That’s the fairness of the exam, of any exam. Failure on one question isn’t a failure overall. Very few people will fail to articulate their intuitions and that’s what’s wrong with where we find ourselves. No one compels us to detail our reasoning. That’s precisely why people cling to irrational beliefs because such beliefs are based on fervent emotion rather than rational, logical methodology.

What’s clear is that the hateful ignorants won’t have anything intriguing to share. They’ll disqualify themselves and millions of Americans will be better off for it. So let our allies and the United Nations rain down heavily on the US should such disenfranchisement ever take place. It is the moral decision! Of course, we can stay on the current course and count up to 146 school shootings in 2018; we can pretend to be fine with the blood on our hands. We can wait to hear the identity of the next minority to die at the hands of corrupt law enforcement or the identity of the next woman to come forward as a victim of sexual assault committed by law enforcement. We can wait for education to be defunded further. We can wait for people to die because their health insurance has been cut off. We can wait for things to get even worse than they are before we realize that the ignorant enable the GOP to carry out business as usual. Collectively, those on the Left need to grow a spine and stop opposing the idea defended here because it makes them uncomfortable. Again, it is the moral decision and we should make strides to implement literacy tests, so that all voters are qualified enough to make the crucial decision of deciding who governs our country.